We haven’t seen stock prices slide like this in a long time, and if this keeps up we could soon be looking at an avalanche. Our rapidly escalating trade war with China and more bad U.S. economic numbers pushed stocks down once again this week, and at this point the Dow Industrial Average has now fallen for five weeks in a row. We haven’t seen a losing streak this long since June 2011, and it is yet another indication that we have reached a major turning point. Some positive comments about China from President Trump on Friday helped to lift stocks a little, but it wasn’t enough to put stocks into the green for the week. Of course the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are both working on losing streaks as well. According to CNBC, both of them have now declined for three weeks in a row… (Read More...)

Slowly but surely, Wall Street is starting to understand that the good times are over. For months, most investors were absolutely convinced that the U.S. and China would be able to work out a trade deal because the alternative would simply be too painful for both sides. But now trade talks are completely dead, and Wall Street is starting to come to grips with the reality that we really are facing a very long trade war. Unless there is a major miracle, this trade war with China is likely to last until the presidential election in 2020, and if Trump wins it could go a lot longer than that. And of course this comes at a time when the U.S. economy is already slowing down dramatically. The economic optimism of the last couple of years is being replaced by a deep sense of gloom, and we are starting to see this reflected in the behavior of the markets. (Read More...)

The more steps that we take toward a war with Iran, the more likely it becomes that somebody will do something really stupid that will actually trigger one. By cutting off Iran’s oil exports, we are threatening to completely wreck their economy, and at this point they feel backed into a corner. And the Iranians have already watched the U.S. invade two countries that they share a border with (Afghanistan and Iraq), and so it is understandable that they are a bit paranoid that it could happen to them too. President Trump keeps saying that he doesn’t want a war with Iran, but the Iranians do not believe a single word any U.S. politician says. Instead, they watch what we actually do very, very closely, and the fact that the Pentagon wants to deploy thousands of new troops to the Middle East is definitely going to freak them out. The following comes from Fox News… (Read More...)

Can you name the major west coast city that has become a rotting, decaying hellhole and is being completely overwhelmed by rats, drugs, crime, piles of garbage and hordes of homeless people? Of course San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, “all of them” and “any of them” would all be correct answers, but in this article we are going to talk about Los Angeles. Once upon a time, millions of young Americans flocked to “sunny L.A.” in order to experience “the California Dream”, but these days Los Angeles seems to be on the cutting edge of many of our most critical societal problems. L.A. has been known for Hollywood, the porn industry and world class traffic congestion, but now it is also becoming famous for “rat-infested piles of rotting garbage”… (Read More...)

If the U.S. economy is “booming” and very bright days are ahead, then why are many large U.S. corporations laying off thousands of workers? Layoffs are starting to come fast and furious now, and this is happening even though the coming recession has not even officially started yet. Of course many are convinced that we are actually in a recession at this moment. In fact, according to John Williams of shadowstats.com if the government was actually using honest numbers they would show that we have been in a recession for quite some time. But the narrative that the mainstream media keeps feeding us is that the U.S. economy is “doing well” and that the outlook for the future is positive. Well, if that is true then why are big companies laying off so many workers right now? (Read More...)

The middle of the country has never seen anything quite like this. As 2019 began, the central portion of the nation was relentlessly hammered by bitter cold and massive snow storms, and many were hoping for better things once spring arrived. But then in March the flooding began, and it hasn’t stopped since. In fact, this is already the longest we have seen flooding along the Mississippi River since 1927, and there is no end in sight. By the time it is all said and done, all of the old records will probably be completely shattered. Meanwhile, powerful storms continue to pound the heartland every few days. Over the weekend, huge storms struck the middle of the country on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and more are expected on Monday. So what is causing such extremely bizarre weather to happen? Is there a reason why weather patterns have shifted so dramatically, or is all of this just a really, really strange coincidence? (Read More...)

Wal-Mart gets approximately one-fourth of all the merchandise that it sells from China, and Wal-Mart’s CFO is warning that “higher tariffs will lead to higher prices for customers”. In other words, U.S. consumers will soon be feeling a lot of pain. Over the last several decades, major retailers such as Wal-Mart have become increasingly dependent on exports from China, and U.S. consumers have loved the “low, low prices” because those rock bottom prices enabled our society to enjoy a greatly inflated standard of living. Of course in the process we were mortgaging our own economic future, because we have lost more than 60,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs since China first joined the WTO in 2001. But we didn’t care because ultra-low prices felt good, and so our economy became increasingly integrated with China’s economy. Well, now a trade war has begun and people all over America are demanding that we get tough with China. And without a doubt something needs to be done about China, but the process of decoupling from the Chinese economy is going to be exceedingly painful. We should have never allowed ourselves to become so dependent on China in the first place, and now the consequences for our past foolishness are going to be very bitter indeed. (Read More...)